All,

My prepress lead created this file for testing RIP's and workflow solutions to see if they will properly handle all the advanced transparency and spot to spot and spot to process gradients.

Feel free to download this and rip it to see if it matches what it looks like in the PDF.

So far, the only RIP to successfully process it without extra work is the HP Indigo. Nexpress was able to come very close, DocuSP, EFI and Spire on the iGen3 all had the same difficulty in rendering it correctly. Prinergy was able to flatten it correctly, Brisque did the worst.

I would love to see what others find, Rampage, and other workflows as well as other RIPs or same ones and see if you get different results.

Fiery 6000 will RIP it correctly, but you have to print it as an image from Acrobat (98 mb). Anyone been able to get Fiery to print correctly without having to print as an image?

Kevin

kevin,

how does it work importing / downloading the file directly to the rip?

-john

Tried it today and boy was it ugly!

Kevin

Exactly. So much for pdf printing workflows if the DFE's can't print it correctly.

Sure, printing it out of Acrobat "fixes" it but it really is a problem with CPSI Adobe RIP's and the inability to handle transparency.

So far, my results...

Workflow
Creo Brisque v. 4 - Horrible results
Creo Prinergy 3.x - Flawless reproduction and separation to all 7 plates
Rampage - Minor issues with separations, could flatten to 4 color correctly

Digital Presses
Creo Spire - Horrible results
EFI - Horrible results
Xerox DocuSP - Horrible results
Kodak Nexpress NexStation - Horrible results, but with v. 8.4 software there is a button to fix this somewhat by processing it as 4 color and not handle it as spots, its called Overprint Preview.
HP Indigo - Minor issues, correct separation but Indigo lacks custom spot color mapping to control spot names it separated.

The issue with the answer being print it out of Acrobat is what if you want to use these effects in optimized PDF's or VI applications?

Patrick,

I did a little preflighting of this pdf you supplied and I see a coulple of problems with it, as far as printability..

1) The spot colors are special mix colors. THey must be pantone colors with naming otherwise the press is not sure how to convert accurately. But would probably print just not accurate..

2) The Vignettes are DeviceN colors.. Igen does not support DeviceN yet (is documented by Xerox)-(may be a DocUSP thing, not sure). Usually you will get Faults and it wont print or Vignettes Print as solids or not at all, and I have also seen Images from the last you printed show up overprinting those vignettes... DeviceN Bad....

I have not tried to print it yet, Just preflighted..

Dale

I agree the file has features that are not supported by rips, these are not problems with files but problems with rips.

There is nothing wrong with using Device N color space, it is a valid color space that all are not supporting yet.

As for spots, trust me, you can define them as custom colors, we do it all the time... Plus good luck telling designers to leave the color names alone and not use custom names.

It separates correctly, the name of the spot color should not matter, only enough in preflight to name your custom spot color in your spot library and put the CMYK values in.

Hello!

If you really want check your RIP what it can do and what it can not do you should try these:

Altona Test Suite

Ghent Output Suite


Feedback would be much appreciated.


Cheers,
deltaE